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Day One
III. TWO BOXES FOR BINDO
1. Dog As Landscape
The function of the overweight backyard cattle dog
is to look for cool areas & warm areas.
When he gets up to shuffle to the kitchen door
he creates mammoth shade.
All winter he is touched by frost.
Overfed in the hot weather, he sleeps it off
for months. Lies down in the outback town.
A waste of life within his own layers of fat.
Three times the dog he used to be.
Dad said, "The vet is onto Kevin about it,
but 'e won't stop feedin' 'im, kids pass
& look over the fence & say, hey mum,
come & look at the fat dog."
Bindo glares at them, but
he barely blinks an eyelid as I pass.
He's heavy on the land like a big load of gidgee logs.
The daylight weighs heavy on him.
He's being forced down by the sheer size of his day.
Bindo's folds spew out over the mown grass like lava.
He kills the lawn he drags along, dad said, "'e can't
even stand to piss like a dog, so
'e just sits there, hating 'is life, as it all runs down
over 'is legs."
It was that injured red look in his eye, soured, bashed up.
The kind of dog that cannot be trusted anymore.
That could bite the hand that feeds him.
Because in the past
the hand that fed him
has also beaten him up.
Underneath he's just a big ruined pup, pup as big as the sun.
What's he thinking in there? Moth eaten
old dog. Just how is he suffering in there?
It's like I could reach deep into his layers of fat, like down
into an old well to pull him out.
To pull out the dog that he was & release him.
But by the look of him, he would take half my hand off
& my face if I got too close.
Funny, all it would take is a few walks & a good diet,
but his owner won't do that.
I imagine Bindo, regaining his youth, galloping along
as a skinny new dog, with all his skin sagging.
But I also think his owner should not beat him up &
he should go to a dog shrink.
If there was ever a dog that needed a shrink it's the owner.
But dad doesn't say anything.
It's better that way, less trouble for everyone.
As for Bindo,
you don't know whether he's going to bite you or not
& he's blaming you for his mistreatment, when you walk past to the toilet.
He's blaming everything that moves,
so that he doesn't have to blame his sadistic owner, whom he still loves. |
